Thursday February 8, 2018 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm This February marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois. W. E. B Du Bois is considered to be one of the most well-known men and renowned figures in African American history. Known for his writings and activism, Du Bois is an intellectual l...

REPARATIONS: From Conversation to ACTION Leave a reply Nationally and locally in the United States, we see political leaders who in both word and deed are seeking to exploit racial divisions through using racist language and by enacting legislation negatively targeting Black, Brown, and Indigenous p...

An award-winning writer, distinguished academic and teacher, photographer, and musician, Julius Lester posed here for a portrait on November 29, 1966 in New Yor...k City, New York. Five years later he would accept an offer from #WEBDDAFRO Chairman Michael Thelwell to join the faculty of the Du Bois Department, then in its infancy. Thelwell and Lester had been comrades in SNCC fighting for freedom and an end to white supremacy. As colleagues at UMass they would develop one of the largest and best Africana Studies departments in the world. Julius did his best work in our department and won the highest honors the university bestows for his teaching work. In later years, after the “Baldwin blowup,” he would migrate to Judaic Studies, but that would happen after almost two decades in our department. Let us go to Jimmy for an afterthought: “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.” Taken from “Letter from a Region of My Mind" in The New Yorker (17 November 1962); republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in The Fire Next Time (1963). Our condolences to the Lester family. Julius passed today. Rise in Power. Tamám Shud.

Recovering the Bones is a two-day academic conference hosted by the Museum. The conference explores the relationship between black religious traditions and material objects by bringing together scholars from a variety of academic disciplines including, folklore studies, archeology, religious history...